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Programs
Partnership
Iredell County
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More at Four Pre-Kindergarten Initiative |
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Smart Start and More at Four Pre-K Program:
Smart Start and the More at Four Pre-Kindergarten Program are both helping North Carolina’s children start school ready to succeed. These two important initiatives complement each other in the ways that they each improve the quality of early childhood education available to our state’s young children. These initiatives are not duplicative, however. While they have the same overarching mission – school readiness – they are quite different in target populations, objectives, strategies, scope, and administration and funding for promoting school readiness. North Carolina’s school readiness goals could not be met without both Smart Start and More at Four. Smart Start is an umbrella statewide initiative that includes community planning and funding for child care and early education. The goal of Smart Start is that all children in North Carolina will arrive at school healthy and prepared for school success. In order to achieve this goal, Smart Start Local Partnerships develop a plan to address the needs of young children in their communities and Smart Start funds local programs, based on the approved plan, such as child care subsidies, technical assistance to child care programs to improve quality, contributing funds for More at Four, parent education and resources, teacher education, and programs that provide access to health services. Thus, Smart Start strategies are locally-determined to meet specific community needs, within parameters and research-based accountability standards set at the state level. Local boards approve and oversee the local activities. Smart Start receives state funding but is a private, non-profit organization. While Smart Start focuses on all children birth to five, More at Four serves four-year-olds – those four-year-olds who are not getting the learning experiences they need to be successful in kindergarten and beyond. More at Four is a statewide, state-funded, high quality pre-kindergarten program. It is more narrow and targeted than Smart Start. More at Four provides a research-supported, tailored educational strategy for preparing four-year-olds who would be behind their peers when starting school without it. At-risk four year olds can be served in four- and five- star licensed child care centers, Head Start programs and public schools and the decision where to provide More at Four is made at the local level. However, all More at Four pre-K classrooms must meet specific state standards – standards that regulate curriculum, teacher credentials, class size and other factors that affect quality.
For more information about the Iredell County
More at Four Program, contact: |
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